Mary Y. Yang
  1. As, Not For
  2. Now What?!
  3. The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2020
  4. New England Triennial
  5. New Formations
  6. Strings Attached 
  7. RISD Commencement
  8. SIMBIG50
  9. Book Cover Design
  10. Yu-Wen Wu: Under the Same Moon
  11. Tone in Tongue
  12. Radical Return Exhibition
  13. Radical Return Catalog
  14. Figure, Character, Sign
  15. Embodied Making As Collective Publishing: The Body and Hanzi
  16. Design Incubation Colloquium 11.1
  17. Perplex, Abstract, and Delight: A Few Covers by Audrey Meyer
  18. Harvard University Houghton Library
  19. Triangular Dreams

Work
2019–2025

Exhibition design, visual designAs, Not For: Dethroning Our Absolutes

Stone Gallery, Boston University Art Galleries
Boston, MA, 2020
Curated by Jerome Harris
Exhibition photography: Tony Luong
I organized, art directed, and designed the exhibition design in collaboration with BU SVA Graphic Design students Ashlie Dawkins, Geo Ferrari, Jay Li, and Angela Lian. Curated by Jerome Harris. As, Not For aims to promote the inclusion of neglected Black designers and their developed methodologies and challenge the ubiquity of White and anti-Black aesthetics in our designed world. These practitioners are absent in too many classroom lectures, and their methods mostly invisible or uncredited in the field .
Watch tour video

✸ Featured in Hyperallergic and BU CFA
✸ Exhibition included in Thinking Through Graphic Design History: Challenging the Canon by Aggie Toppins (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025)


Exhibition design, visual identityNow What?! Advocacy, Activism & Alliances
in American Architecture Since 1968

Boston Society for Architecture
Boston, MA, 2022Collaborator: Marks + Spaces
Curators: Architexx
Project management: Point Line Projects
Exhibition photography: Paige McWhorter
Exhibition dates: March 10 – October 31, 2022
 Now What?! examines the overlooked history of architects and designers advancing civil rights, women’s, and LGBTQ movements. I co-led the exhibition design, in collaboration with Jessie Rubenstein (Marks + Spaces), and mentored five Boston University students through research and spatial development. I developed the interpretive systems and implemented the visual identity, using modular displays and participatory elements to foreground design’s civic impact. The exhibition positions the built environment as a site of activism and collective action.

 Read interview about the exhibition design

✸ Communication Arts Typography Award
✸ Presented at Boston Society for Architecture, affiliated with Boston Design Week


Information designThe Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2020

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing
London, UK, 2025
 Editors: Lori A. Brown and Karen Burns
 This timeline was published in The Bloomsbury Global Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960–2020, an international project which brings together 1200 entries on women architects and on women active as architectural educators, journalists, policy makers, theorists, historians, activists and urbanists to map the ways in which women have shaped the global built environment.

I collaborated with the editors, Lori A. Brown and Karen Burns, to design a timeline that provides historical context and visualizes key events on women in architecture. 


Exhibition identity design, book designNew England Triennial

deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and Fruitlands Museum
Boston, MA, 2022
Curators: Sarah Montross, Senior Curator, deCordova, Shana Dumont Garr, Curator, Fruitlands, with Krista Alba, Curatorial Assistant, deCordova
Identity design concept collaborator: Angela Lian
Exhibition photography: Julia Featheringill
Exhibition dates: deCordova: April 8, 2022 – September 11, 2022 & Fruitlands: April 8, 2022 – October 2, 2022The New England Triennial 2022 celebrated contemporary art across the Northeast, presented across two venues. I designed the exhibition identity, including graphics and catalogue, inspired by Earthseed, the belief system from Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. The typography and visual identity translated Butler’s philosophy into form, using custom overlapping type to reflect change as a constant, reinforcing the Triennial’s themes of transformation, adaptation, and resilience.

✸ Communication Arts Typography Award


Exhibition identity designNew Formations

deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park
Lincoln, MA, 2022
New Formations is a contemporary art exhibition exploring human bodies in collective performance, ritual, and movement. I designed the exhibition identity, including the title wall, wall labels, color palette, and wall vinyl, using typography that suggests motion and form to reinforce the exhibition’s themes of kinship, transformation, and embodied experience.


Identity designString Attached Concert Series

University of Washington School of Music
Seattle, WA, 2019 Identity design for the University of Washington School of Music “Strings Attached” 2019–20 concert series. I developed a visual identity that explores the relationship between musical notation and typography to create a cohesive and expressive design system across promotional materials and print collateral.

Read interview


Identity designRISD Commencement

Dunkin’ Donuts Center
Providence, RI, 2022
Collaborator: Suzie Shin
Art director: Huy Vu
Motion designer: Kyle Green
RISD Commencement 2022 on YouTubeIdentity design for the RISD Commencement 2022 that celebrates the Class of 2022 and 2022. The identity is driven by celebratory shapes, fresh gradients, and distorted type created with custom, digital brushes. 

✸ Graphic Design USA, Design Award


Book designSIMBIG50: Celebrating 50 Years of the Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design

Published by Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Boston, MA, 2023
Curated by Evan F. Smith, Nita Sturiale and Sam Toabe
Written by Kate Redmond and Nita Sturiale with contributions by John Engstrom, Mary K. Grant, Dawn Kramer, Jeff McLaughlin, Dana Moser, Juan Obando, Susan Orlean, Evan F. Smith, Robert Taylor, and Ron Wallace.
Edited by Danielle Weindling

Distributed by Printed Matter, Draw Down, and MassArt BookstoreDesigned Mass Art SIM program’s 50-year anniversary catalog, which features 500 pages of 500 images from the MassArt library archives along with essays, reproduced texts, featured faculty and alum, and a glossary of SIM terms. I co-moderated a panel about archiving, designing, and curating radical art histories.

✸ Co-moderated and presented at panel discussion at MassArt


Book design, researchBook Cover Designs

Published by University of Washington Press and Verso Books
Seattle, WA, and Chicago, IL, 2020–2022
Book cover designs for books centered on Asia and Asian American scholarship.
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© 2026 Mary Y. Yang